


Ghosts

by jiokra



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015), Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Action/Adventure, Angst, Canon Compliant, Concussions, Ensemble Cast, Friendship, Gen, Hurt Rey, Hurt/Comfort, Jedi Rey, Male-Female Friendship, Mission Fic, Oblivious, POV Rey (Star Wars), Post-Canon, Rey-Centric, Whump, background Finn & Poe & BB-8
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-29
Updated: 2016-05-29
Packaged: 2018-06-03 02:52:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,851
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6593803
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jiokra/pseuds/jiokra
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>While on a reconnaissance mission to investigate a blank spot on the Galactic map, Rey battles her guilt over leaving Finn on D'Qar after Starkiller.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ghosts

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Komadori](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Komadori/gifts).



> Fill for genprompt_bingo "A Battle / Fight / Confrontation."

Rey’s first mission for the Resistance was only slightly more legitimate than the unofficial quest to return BB-8 to the base on D’Qar.

Intelligence of a mysterious blank spot on the Galactic map came from informants within the Republic, who were irritated at the Republic’s refusal to investigate, and so General Organa entrusted Poe to venture on a reconnaissance mission to uncover details about the blank spot. The evening Poe was due to ship out, he slipped beside Rey and Finn as they explored dinner options in the mess (Rey could not _believe_ the beverage variety, let alone the meals). Poe’s fingers were entwined and knees jostling, distracting Finn from his recountment of a lewd story about the pilots in Poe’s squadron. After a little prodding, Rey and Finn coaxed him into talking. Poe’s discomfort over the mysteriousness of this blank spot, while hidden beneath a façade of self-confidence, prompted Rey to volunteer. Finn hadn’t been far behind. 

And that was how Rey acquired her first mission for the Resistance, despite not being officially issued it. When General Organa noticed Poe boarded the Millennium Falcon that evening with too many accomplices, she had turned her back to them, which Rey accepted to be as close to an official seal of approval as the mission would ever get. 

It was amazing to finally meet Poe, who Finn had spoken so much about during their holographic messages. Poe had been there for Finn through out his recovery after Starkiller, talking to him in his comatose state, raising Finn’s spirits as he relearned how to live with an artificial spine. Poe was an excellent friend, a worthwhile partner on missions, and Rey felt the tension coiled within her finally ease since leaving Finn in his coma. Rey wanted to thank Poe—to acknowledge that Poe had been there for Finn, while she had only failed her dear friend. 

As the Millennium Falcon burled through hyperspace, Rey and Poe fell into an easy rhythm behind the cockpit. Poe flew as if he’d been the one to break into it at night on Jakku, and it was his expertise and confidence that made Rey comfortable enough to surrender the cockpit to him as they traveled through a stretch of vast, empty space, and direct her attention toward Finn. She’d been at the Resistance for only a few days, long enough to accept that Finn was alive and well, yet whenever she looked at him, all she could see was his still figure unconscious in the snow, smoke curling away from his charred jacket. Regarding Poe’s stoic countenance as he concentrated on hyperspace travel, Rey smiled tersely, then left the cockpit, and made her way to Finn. 

Finn lit up when Rey sat beside him on the little seating area, BB-8 perched at his ankles. Rey was struck silent at the fact that Finn was up and moving. The prosthetic spine had given him a strength that surpassed anything that an organic human spine could ever accomplish. 

Rey drew upon the Force to steady herself: _There is no chaos, there is harmony._ “Shall we finish that story you were telling before we got on this quest?” she asked. 

Finn grinned, wide and infectious, and cackled at a memory of Snap nosediving toward a sarlacc pit before he even got around to uttering the first words of the story. 

Soon they arrived at the blank spot. Located on Achilo-Ni, a habitable planet—yet void of life—with a dense forest and a massive ocean that swallowed up much of the planet’s surface. Once they broke through the atmosphere, Finn’s smile slipped off his face, replaced by a grim, fiery expression Rey had always envisioned to be etched across the face of a fiery Resistance fighter. It seemed like yesterday when she had been bewildered at Finn’s confession that he was once a stormtrooper. He had a similar look then, one clouded by uncertainty. As Finn peered over her shoulder and nodded to Poe, the determination in him mystified her. He had found his place in the galaxy. Foolishly, Rey felt jealous at Poe for having had the opportunity to witness this brave, wonderful man become the hero before them. 

_There is no chaos, there is harmony._

The forest was eerily quiet when they crept out of the Falcon. The only sounds were leaves crackling as winds stirred them and sticks broke beneath their boots and BB-8. For all the eye could see was endless swaths of green and rich, fertile dirt. 

Rey got to admire it for a only second longer before a blast whipped past her cheek—then she saw him, a man hidden in the brambles up ahead. 

Finn had his blaster up and fired back, his aim true. The man collapsed, blaster falling out of his grasp, yet he crawled toward it. Finn shot at the blaster, the laser knocking it out of the man’s path and the sparks raining down over his face. Shrieking, the man curled into a ball, palms massaging his eyes, and was rendered considerably easy to subdue. Rey snatched her blaster, pointing at the man’s face as Finn kicked the man’s shoulder, rolling his back the ground and forcing him belly up, and crouched to interrogate him. Poe and BB-8 covered them, the droid analyzing the forest for life signs and Poe training his blaster at their surroundings. 

Finn patted the man’s chest, close enough to the wound to make it sting. “Hey, we don’t want any trouble,” said Finn. “We just want to know what you’re up to here. So it’d be _really_ nice if you could—” Finn broke off, working out a knot in his throat. 

Rey frowned. “Finn?” 

Finn traced an emblem over the man’s chest, then his stare hardened. His hand no longer patted the man’s chest, but balled into a fist and dug into the man’s wound. “ _Where are they?_ ” 

Rey blinked, fingers fidgeting over her blaster, struck by the unbridled fury that had Finn shaking. She knew that Finn would not react like this and hurt a person unless it was warranted, yet she couldn’t stand to see him torture someone. She wasn’t opposed to the concept, no matter what Luke proclaimed, yet she couldn’t stand to see Finn succumb to anger. “Let’s settle down, yeah?” she said, touching Finn’s shoulder. 

Finn turned to her. “Rey, this man isn’t just a smuggler. He’s working for people kidnapping children and sending them to the First Order. I recognize this emblem,” he said, tapping the tip of his blaster on the stitching over the man’s chest. 

A frightened, haunting stare bored into her, as it once had long ago when Finn asked her at Maz’s to leave with him to the Outer Rim. Rey gripped her blaster with both hands and fired a shot at the ground beside the man’s head, not close enough to sear his flesh yet his skin tinged pink from the heat. 

Her teeth were bared as she spoke, and she liked to think she looked horrifying enough to incite fear in the man. “You will tell us where the children are,” she said. 

The mind trick took affect, and by the time Poe joined them, the man had rattled out the location of the children down to the exact room. Poe froze as soon as he realized what was going on, and BB-8 sped over to the man, zapping him until he was unconscious. 

“We need a game plan,” said Poe, tapping his thumb against his blaster. 

“These places aren’t heavily guarded,” said Finn. “There might be five people at the most in there. Two people acting as guards, someone they captured for administrative purposes, and two people who keep the children hostage.” 

Rey froze, tucking her blaster back into its holster. She kept trying to imagine a small boy of Finn’s type frightened and alone, but she couldn’t. Whether that was because she couldn’t will herself to do so or that her brain could not fathom Finn in such a predicament, Rey didn’t know. 

“Right,” said Poe, then shook his head. “Finn, you’re the best with a blaster out of the lot of us, so keep sharp and alert and watch our backs. Rey, we’re gonna need more mind tricks and, worse case scenario, the lightsaber, but it’s best we keep it secret that we have a Jedi with us.” Lest the First Order found out and murdered her, as Luke’s new Padawan had a galaxy renowned bounty on her head. 

“And you?” she asked. 

Poe looked down at his blaster. “I’m not as great as Finn, but I’ll manage.” At that, BB-8 rolled back, shrieking strings of binary. Rey caught patches that suspiciously sounded like, “Five missions ago, failure to negotiate with—” Yet she caught no more because Poe covered up BB-8’s chirps with a throaty hack. 

As the chirps and hacks fought to cancel each other out, Finn nudged Rey with his elbow and peered over at her, expression void of humor. “You see what I have to deal with?” 

Rey smiled, but couldn’t meet his eye. She could envision quite well the dynamic the trio must’ve developed: Poe leaping head first into danger, Finn dashing in to save him, BB-8 rolling alongside for lack of a better option. It ought to soothe her that Finn had made a life for himself when the last time she saw him, he had been frightened for his life and wanting nothing more than to disappear into the Outer Rim. Yet it managed to hurt. Although R2-D2 and Chewbacca had joined her in the quest to find Luke, and Luke had become not only her Jedi Master but a paternal figure for her, Finn still remained her only friend in the galaxy, and no one could replace the significance of their chance meeting. Through no will of her own, their paths had diverged. Finn had grown into a better man and built a life for himself, one in which there was no place for a mere scavenger, Jedi apprentice or not. 

“Rey,” said Finn. He quirked his head and stepped in front of her, blocking her from watching Poe and BB-8. “Are you okay?” 

Rey glanced at him, then fiddled with the hilt of her lightsaber. “Fine.” 

Before Finn could press the issue, BB-8 rolled off from Poe and beeped in feigned exasperation, knocking into Finn as he rolled passed. Finn’s eye twitched, and he took in a huge breath, muttering in growing exasperation, “Droid, we are in an _open area_.” 

They trekked through dense woodlands toward an outpost in an artificial clearing, stumps and fallen trees bordering it like a fortification. BB-8 rolled slowly behind them, heading spinning as the droid gathered information about the premise. He nudged Poe’s leg, beeping softly. “Sure,” mumbled Poe. “Scout the perimeter.” 

They split up in silence, the droid rolling off while the others cast their surroundings with hawkish stares. The building, despite the crumbling metallic roof and bordered up windows, was brand new. Rey knew what a true junk discarded after the final battles against the Empire looked like, and the embossments on this building were too pudgy and soft compared to the Imperial waste on Jakku. This outpost was based off of Imperial architecture, the rust and decay an artistic flair rather than a natural erosion. They walked for a full minute, the only noise foliage breaking beneath their boots, when they spotted the first scouts: stormtroopers with small, angular helmets and, from Rey’s vantage point, blasters in hand. Finn noticed them first and clutched Rey and Poe’s shoulders, collapsing to his knees and dragging them to the ground. They huddled behind a fallen tree, trading off looking through Poe’s binoculars. 

“They’re trained to stun, not kill, and to capture anyone who trespasses,” whispered Finn. 

Poe curled his lip. “Figures.” 

“Their weapons?” asked Rey. 

“Just blasters, standard issue. They’re trigger happy because they’re troopers who were too weak for the battlefield but too good a shot to discard out to space with the trash.” 

“Great,” said Poe. “My favorite. Demoted officers with a bone to pick.” Finn passed him back the binoculars, and Poe squinted as he looked through the lenses toward the troopers. “BB-8 ought to find another way in. Last thing we need is to engage and alert their buddies.” He pocketed the binoculars, and backed away in a crawl, dragging himself with the crook of his elbow and digging his knees into the dirt for a shove. 

Rey fell in behind, grimacing at the dirt kicked into her face by the boots ahead of her, but soon enough they had crawled far enough into the forest for the trees’ branches and leaves to hide them. They trotted around the outpost, careful to place their footsteps on fresh, barren soil. 

Twigs cracked ahead, and Rey’s hand jerked to her lightsaber, yet it was only a false alarm. BB-8 rolled past a tree, twirling his head at the sight of them. He bleeped—behind the outpost were ducts loose enough for them to pry off and enter the building. His sensors detected the ducts veered off in two directions, one in the southern most corridor and another in the northern. Poe whispered a translation for Finn. 

“We head south,” said Finn. “They starve people of daylight so they forget how long they’ve been in there.” 

They arrived at a corner of the building a little ways from the troopers, far enough to avoid detection as long as they spoke seldom and lowly whenever they did. BB-8 lowered the settings on his volume controls, and Poe huddled around him as he rambled off data on the vents. 

Rey examined a vent, tugging at various parts to search for weak spots. Finn dug through his pockets, searching for any tool inside that could help out. He retrieved a busted shell for his blaster, and while it was not only too thick but also too miniscule to be of any use, Rey took it. “Thanks,” she muttered, rougher than intended, and grimaced at how easily it could have been read as sarcastic. She glanced at Finn shortly, yet averted her gaze back to the vent and fought back the heat rising to her cheeks when she noticed Finn smiling at her fondly. 

“Like old times on the Millennium Falcon,” said Finn. 

Biting the inside of her cheek, Rey fought to shove the shell between the rim of the vent and the metallic wall. One ear focused on the screech of metal against metal, while the other listened to BB-8 detail the map he devised for the inside of the building. The southern most corridor plunged to subterranean levels, as Finn’s report suggested, and contained air made freezing by the temperature regulation systems. Rey fidgeted, overly conscious of her bare shoulders and the light fabrics she wore. Anch-To was perpetually cast in fog, clouds so thick not even the summer sun could penetrate them and bake the planet in oppressive heat. Jakku had been her habitat for so long that cold always shortsighted her. Luke had noticed this in their first days together, his initial instruction then being to instruct her on how to dissociate from temperature. She focused on her senses now, imagining the heat of Jakku. As her cheeks began to flush from the exertion, the shell lodged itself beneath the brim of the vent. With a singular tug, the vent snapped off, and were it not for Rey’s quick reflexes, it would have clattered to the ground and alerted the scouts. Regarding the shell anew, Rey huffed, then slipped it in a pocket hidden beneath her many layers of thin clothing. 

Metal sheeting lined the inside of the vent, daylight bouncing off of the mirrored surface and casting the end of the tunnel with partial lighting until shadows overtook the tunnel, a slight fork visible until the vent descended into darkness. Poe bent on one knee before BB-8, opening up a compartment and retrieving a comm. He tucked it inside his ear, then nodded firmly. “You’re too big to get inside and we need someone to guard the entry,” he told the droid. “I’ll contact you when we get the kids, tell you how many are coming your way. You gotta take them to the Falcon.” 

BB-8 beeped, body quivering. 

Poe smiled. “It’ll be fine. If anything happens, you’ll be the first I tell.” He patted BB-8’s head, then looked over his shoulder at Rey, a pointed expression which Rey understood to be his voiceless order to enter the air duct. 

Diving head first, Rey crawled as she had in the forest. Finn and Poe were not far behind. Soon the fork in the duct came up, and Poe called out the direction for the southern corridor. The duct acquired a steady descent, the echoing from elbows and knees banging against the metal a thunderstorm of noise. Rey stiffen her brow, and hissed at them to crawl more gently lest they fancied the thought of getting caught—but then she heard it: the cries of countless voices screaming in the agony of unimaginable torture. Her limbs froze, breathe locked in her throat, and she halted so abruptly that Finn ran into her. 

“What’s the hold up?” said Poe. 

Rey’s voice shook. “They’re suffering.” 

Finn gulped—the noise audible in the stillness that befell the ducts in their pause. “They?” 

Rey shut her eyes, focusing on the cries made earsplitting through the Force. “Adults. How can that be?” 

“Damn it, this isn’t just a trading hub. It must be a reconditioning center.” 

“We must hurry,” said Rey, opening her eyes. Despite the dark, the Force allowed her to sense with clarity the space before her, the distance between the stormtroopers and her. Her gut twisted. It so easily could have been Finn’s cries she heard through the Force now, had Poe and he not broken out of the Finalizer together. 

They moved silently and quickly through the tunnels, slowing down to gingerly make their way over vents sending cool air into the rooms below. Most rooms were storage facilities, others were vacant offices with paperwork piled sky high. New presences were felt in the Force, one being a pestering, foul essence Rey associated most with starvation and the Teetos. The other presence possessed such a frightened, innocent vibe. Instinctively, she knew these to be the children, and that they were unharmed, alone, and near. She sped up her crawl, eager to seize the brief window of opportunity to rescue them without detection, and whispered for the others to hear, “We’re close.” 

After the next half dozen vents, Rey spotted them: five children, around the ages of three to seven years of age, huddled together in a damp room void of furniture. She lowered her senses long enough to get a feel for the temperature, and slammed her shields back up, the cold like spikes of ice stabbing into her flesh. She pried open the vents. When it popped off, the children all jolted, snapping their heads up at the ceiling. 

Rey felt her eyes sting and throat ache. “I’m going down.” 

“You two find the prisoners,” said Poe. “I’ll take the children to Beebee-Ate.” 

She swung herself out of the vent, slowing her descent with the Force until she dropped down onto the floor of the room without a sound. 

The children were petrified—paling, mouths gaping wide open in silent terror. Finn jumped out of the duct, tripping and landed on his hip, yet Rey paid him no heed, instead raising her hands, palms toward the children, in the universal symbol of surrender. “We bring you no harm,” she said. 

The children all blinked, and bodies began to sway. “You bring us no harm.” 

Her hands snapped down instantly. 

Finn gripped on her shoulder, pulling lightly, and she turned to him. His eyes were soft, welcoming. “It’s okay. They’re scared and impressionable.” 

Rey then looked at the children, really looked at them, and saw the dirty rags covering their bodies, their frail, thin wrists, sunken cheeks. Her hands balled into fists, one quivering, aching to seize up her lightsaber and slash the necks of the monsters who devolved the children into such a state. Mouth curled bitterly, Rey hated herself to the core for the next words she said, wanting nothing more than to gnash her teeth, yet she spoke gently, with kindness few had shown her in her meager life. “You will let us put you in the air duct, and you will follow Poe and BB-8 to the Falcon. You will trust them with your lives.” 

The children swayed, then repeated the words, and without a moment’s hesitation, Rey and Finn got to work holding up each child for Poe to grasp and heave up into the ducts. Rey concentrated on their Force signatures. However null their own capabilities in the Force were, their signatures still linked with unsurmountable strength to her. They’d make it alive and whole to the Falcon. She knew Poe would accomplish this. She trusted few people, but Poe had proven himself. 

She observed a steel door, locked from the outside, and snatched her lightsaber. She switched the saber on, and not until Finn’s gasp did she remember no one had yet to see her personalized saber except for Luke. The blade burned her retinas as it lit up, its green hue a twin of Luke’s, composed of crystals Luke had sunk in the coral reefs under Anch-To’s seas. She had retrieved them through the Force, a test Luke had detailed with ambiguous instruction, and she’d spat out ill will at him for hours, breathless and exhausted, until the first crystal floated out of its cage of razor sharp coral. Luke met her stunned silence with a witty turn of phrase that had her biting back a groan mixed with amusement and exasperation. The saber was forged in the courtyard of the First Jedi Temple, the handle bits of scrap found in the Falcon, and they had slept in the council room for the night, too drunk on wine and joy to find discomfort on the cold, harsh stone tile. 

She approached the door for the children’s prison and stabbed the lock until the saber pierced through, carving out a massive hole large enough for a hand to fit through. She made to stick her hand through the hole and merely turn the knob, but the door creaked inward, the saber having damaged it beyond repair. 

Finn stepped beside her, grasping the edge of the door and tugging. He peered down the hall. “It’s either clear or you scared them off. Do you feel the prisoners?” 

Rey closed her eyes, focusing. “They’re not far. To the left. I’m sensing two or three—two men and a woman, I believe.” 

Finn opened the door with his boot, then disappeared into the corridor. Rey followed, killing her lightsaber and switching it for her blaster. They crept down the hall, weapons at attention and ears strained to pick up any slight noise. Rey focused on the intensity of the prisoner’s signatures, and, regretfully, she detected that they grew in strength with the signatures of the First Order officers. The intensity overwhelmed her as they approached a steel door, and she cut herself off from both parties. She stopped. Finn halted a stride later, turning to look at her over his shoulder. He tipped his head at the door as if to say, _This one?_

Rey nodded, ignoring the knot in her throat. 

Finn rolled back his shoulders, pressing his lips into a firm line. Regarding Rey briefly, Finn nodded to himself, then shot blasts at the door knob until it melted off and the door popped open. He kicked in the door, and, to neither of their surprise, gained them entry to a torture chamber. 

Three officers in black suits and short brimmed hats swerved to the door, monstrous instruments poised over the three prisoners shackled to a chair, table, wall, their limp figures caked with dry blood. Finn’s bellowed and charged into the room, firing blasts first at the officer positioned over a man unconscious and shackled to the wall. Rey shot in after him, darting along the wall, blaster pointing straight over the heart of one of the officers, neither caring if her shot were the killing blow or one merely destined to stun. 

An officer dove for a desk where a leather satchel was open, metal instruments poured out of its innards, and hid behind the desk’s wooden backing, the top of his head visible as he implemented whatever he had set out to accomplish. Rey clenched her jaw. “You will stop whatever it is you’re doing and—” 

“She’s a Jedi!” 

“ _Impossible!_ ” 

A blow to the back of her head, that was all the warning Rey had until an arm wormed around her neck from behind and stuffed a gag into her mouth. Rey bit into the gag, seething at the fingers she was unable to tear off, and kicked out her legs. 

Finn shot at the officer behind her, yet left himself exposed to the officer hiding beneath the desk. The officer fell to the floor and weaseled his blaster between the desk’s wooden and the floor, firing off a blast at Finn’s ankles that sent him flying. 

Rey’s gag was pulled taut, digging into the corners of her mouth, and she tasted iron. The officer snatched the blaster from her hand and dug it into the tail of her spine, firing the nerves there, and shoved her in the direction of the man shackled to the wall. The officer shoved her against the wall beside the man, pulling up her arms. Shackles clattered overhead, and soon the officer began to bind her wrists. When it was complete, they beat her head with the butt of her blaster until she blacked out. 

* * *

Rey awoke only minutes later with a hairsplitting headache too fresh for anything longer than a single hour. She heard Finn grunt and shackles clank. She pressed her forehead into the stone wall, biting against her gag, and tried turning her head to catch sight of Finn. Fortunately, he was not far off, only on the other side of the unconscious man. After confirming the signatures in the room that no officer lurked about, Rey groaned against her gag, kicking the wall in order to catch Finn’s attention.

Finn swung around to face her, but then hissed, presumably having upset a nerve in his neck. “Rey!” he said, voice full of unabashed delight. “Don’t panic. Poe’s gonna save us.” 

Rey screamed against the gag. Surely Finn knew how ludicrous he sounded. And, besides, Rey was a Padawan. The officers were fools if they believed a mere gag and bound were enough to contain her. She had yet to master sending long range messages through the Force, but were she capable, she’d thank Luke for plunging crystals into the sea. Recalling the instruments on the desk, Rey focused on the sharpest, most heinous device she remembered, shutting her eyes to direct all her energy toward lifting it from the desk and floating it toward her gag. She sliced open the gag with it, and while to accomplish this required less concentration, and therefore she could open her eyes, she kept them shut out of a childish wish to not witness an instrument that sharp so close to her face. Once the gag fell off, Rey gasped for air and floated the instrument toward her shackles. “How long have they left us here?” she asked. 

“Whoa.” 

“ _Finn!_ ” 

“Right. Sorry. Right… Right, they left about thirty minutes ago, give or take. I tried keeping count, but got distracted somewhere around twenty minutes.” 

Rey hissed as the shackles pinched her skin. “You actually counted the seconds for twenty minutes?” While she knew the question sounded accusative, all she could think about were the marks she etched into the AT-AT that she had once called a home on Jakku. 

“No.” Finn fidgeted. “Of course, not. That’s ridiculous.” The instrument paused in the shackles, and Rey turned to him, eyebrows scrunched together. Finn refused to look at her, yet the weight of her stare had him flopping against the wall. “All right, _all right_. I counted all the way to twenty-eight minutes. Then you woke up and I stopped. Happy now?” 

Rey returned to picking her shackles apart. “Very.” 

Finn rambled and talked himself into circles while Rey fiddled with the shackles, stopping only when the lock for the shackles clicked, and Rey sprung away from the wall, narrowly evading the shackles before they could lash her cheek. Her mind spun and balance upturned at the sudden movement, yet she forced herself to focus. She then floated the instrument toward Finn’s bounds and went to the prisoner hanging between them, feeling his neck for a pulse and finding a steady one. 

Rey frowned, running her hand along the man’s jaw, which was colder then she’d prefer. She peered at the other prisoners, unconscious in their bounds. “You said they are to be reconditioned? Should we prepare to battle them when they awaken?” 

Finn exhaled as his shackles popped open, jumping away before the metal links hit him. He rubbed his wrists. “No need. They like to beat up their troopers first before it starts, make them think they can volunteer back into their posting and avoid getting reconditioned.” 

Finn jogged over to the desk and retrieved his own instrument for picking at the locks, and they got to work freeing the prisoners. Once Rey freed the man hanging from the wall, she caught him in her arms and eased the weight of him by holding him partially through the Force. She set him on the floor, then went for the woman tied to a chair. 

“How are we going to get them through the air ducts?” she said, clenching her jaw as this lock proved to be more defiant that the last three. 

“Poe’s coming,” said Finn, and Rey ached for Finn to share a portion of his hope. 

The woman’s figure was more lithe, possibly from malnourishment, and Rey was able to hover her body, freeing herself to slug the man over her shoulder. Rey busied herself with adjusting the man’s weight while keeping track of the woman, yet the back of her head prickled with nerves. She spied Finn out the corner of her eye, pressing her lips together as she noted his solid hold on the other male prisoner, yet startled when she noticed him staring. She grimaced. “What?” 

“It’s just…” Finn ducked his head. “You’ve changed.” He stilled. “For the better, I mean. Not that you weren’t great before. But now you’re all… Jedi Master Rey.” 

Rey stepped toward the door, reaching for her saber and thankful for the thin layers of clothing she wore that hid it from the officers. She switched it on, then began melting the makeshift lock the officers had put in place of the knob Finn destroyed. Finn shuffled behind her, his steps lacking in strength, and Rey cringed, realizing she’d have to verbalize the thoughts she’d fought to not acknowledge within herself. 

“You changed, too,” she said. “For the better.” 

“You never told me what it was like, meeting Luke, learning about the Force,” said Finn, volume teetering off until the last words were barely audible. 

Rey’s saber dove through the lock, creating a hole that was unnecessary as soon the door merely creaked open on its own accord. “I’ve heard so much about your adventures with Poe, but very little about how it was like when you…” She swore under her breath in another language, and hooked her ankle around the door, jerking it open. Shaking her head, Rey figured she preferred honesty with Finn more than hiding from the truth. “I’m sorry, my friend, for leaving you.” 

His fingertips grazed her elbow, too limp to grasp her yet his mere touch riveted her. “Rey, you don’t need to—” 

BB-8 flew past the door, and Rey was so perturbed that she forgot both about Finn and the potential dangers lurking in the outpost, and shouted, “Beebee-Ate!” 

BB-8 screeched to a halt, then rolled back to the door, screaming out binary, which Rey interpreted to Finn. The officers had deserted the outpost, every single one, even the two guards. Poe was engaging them in a guerilla battle to prevent them from boarding a Delta class DX-9 stormtrooper transporter, reengineered with the engine and laser cannons of a state of the art TIE fighter. The likelihood of holding them off for more than ten-point-eight minutes had a probability of, accounting for current weather reports— 

“Droid,” broke in Finn. 

BB-8’s head swiveled, and they would have stood there staring each other down, but then Rey cut past BB-8 and left the chamber. 

* * *

When they ran up the ramp into the Millennium Falcon, the officers had already won and boarded the DX-9. Poe sat in the cockpit of the Falcon, preparing for liftoff. Finn secured the unconscious troopers, then seized the cannons, and Rey fell into her seat beside Poe. BB-8 locked his cords onto the walls, tucking in for the ride.

Poe smirked, and then there was a dance between Rey and him as they rushed to switch on the Falcon and prepare for battle. Rey jabbed and jerked the various switches and buttons, oblivious to the incredible strength she exerted, punching the main frame more than anything, and missed the skeptical glances Poe shot her way until he cleared his throat. Rey regarded him out her peripheral vision. “I had to expose myself to them. They know there’s more than one Jedi in the galaxy.” 

Poe pursed his lips. “Finn, if you get them in your crosshairs, you take the shot as soon as you can.” 

“Understood,” said Finn. 

Poe seized the center stick and pulled, then the Falcon jolted and broke out of the forest, hacking off trees as it chased the DX-9 into the sky. Rey’s mind spun as the Falcon shook with turbulence, spots appearing in her eyes. She bit her lip when her head started to pound. She felt as if her head were not her own, as if her body were not on the Falcon but floating elsewhere. Unnerved, Rey skittered her hands across the cockpit, searching out the controls for the inertial damper, having yet to adjust the settings for lift off. Rey furrowed her brow. _It’s my job to ensure the calibrations are correct before lift off._ She looked down at her hands, quivering with tremors, and wondered how she could have forgotten to complete the action that was always at the forefront of her mind. 

Hairs on her neck prickled, and Rey patted her nape to quell her nerves. Curious, she traced along her scalp, feeling for the wound the First Order officer had beat into her head. Her fingers felt only hair for the longest time before coming across a hot, wet substance. 

“Rey!” shouted Poe, staring hard at the viewport. “You all right there, pal?” 

Rey blinked, blurry vision coming to focus on the brightly colored buttons over the cockpit. “Yeah,” she said. She shook her head, then got to work on the inertial damper, providing some balance to Poe’s steering, and soon the pair were a well-oiled machine, accelerating on the DX-8 without the slightest turbulence and getting Finn into position to fire. 

The Falcon had the superior engines, having been built and crafted to perfection for warfare, yet the improvements made to the DX-9 had it weaving through dense clouds, camouflaging, and dodging lasers Finn fired at them. Poe gritted his teeth and anticipated their twists and turns before they ever made them. When the DX-9 opened fire, Rey had the shields up to 90%, and the lasers fired from the back of the DX-9 skidded across the top of the Falcon. The ship quaked. Rey ignored how the shaking agitated her headache, and hurried to work up the shields. Once the shields were up, Rey analyzed the DX-9’s speed, how it slowly gained and widened the distance between the First Order and the Falcon, and tried to remember if she’d forgotten any malicious additions the Teetos had imposed on the Falcon and limited its ability to accelerate. 

Finn fired, hitting the DX-9 near its engine, which slowed the DX-9 enough that once they started exiting the atmosphere, their speed dwindled and the distance between them and the Falcon began to diminish. 

“Yes!” cried Finn, slapping his center stick. 

Poe beamed, grinning wide. “You got an eagle’s eye.” 

Rey’s head was pounding, and it took too much attention to focus on preventing the pain from impeding her ability to focus on the battle. That, Rey supposed, was why a smile sneaked past her. She focused on Finn’s joy as another shot was fired and knocked the DX-9 off balance, slowing the ship even more, and kept an ear focused on his voice as the Falcon broke through the atmosphere, turbulence rocketing through the ship despite the inertial damper, and Rey’s vision blacked out for a brief moment before returning to her. 

She cleared her throat. “They could jump to hyperspace at any moment.” 

Poe huffed. “Not with Finn at the cannon.” He peered over his shoulder as he yelled, “Ready, hotshot?” 

It occurred to her then that the Teetos _had_ tampered with the Falcon. Not just the compressor, but the electric pulses between the switches, slowly down the messages between buttons on the main frame. Rey collapsed to her knees, muttering to Poe her plan of action, and crouched, tilting her head as she examined the various wires beneath the main frame. As she worked, she listened to Finn and Poe exchange boisterous pilot talk, and wondered if Finn preferred this in a friend, the ease between Poe and him, their rapid fire jokes, the slang. Rey could never do that, not even if she tried. Rey wasn’t an idiot; she knew people sought various qualities in friends and appreciated each person in their life differently, but, still, she worried. She pulled too hard on a wire while dwelling on these thoughts, accidentally shocking herself, and hissed before working through the pain. 

She eventually found the addition the Teetos made. Putty was jammed around wires, perhaps preventing them from firing off electricity to the wrong channel. Now all it did was allow the First Order to escape. Rey tore off the putty, dropping it to the floor and not bothering to see where it fell, and grabbed the two freed wires and brought them together. 

The wires shot out sparks, raining down on her skin and blinding her, yet Poe cheered at the abrupt change in speed the Falcon acquired, so she just shut her eyes and bit her lip when her skin started to feel scorched. Her head felt weak as she saw nothing but darkness, and she swayed, drowsy. 

Her fingertips tingled, blood rushing to the surface and warming her; perhaps this warmth was elicited by the sparks, burning her, but Rey didn’t mind. The metal floor of the Falcon was so cold, like Anch-To, burning her exposed shoulders worse than the heat from those sparks. Jakku’s weather was the only thing she missed from the planet. The perfect planet ought to be a mixture of Jakku’s heat and Anch-To’s water supply and ecology; a planet where there was peace and harmony, where Rey could live with the friends she’d made and be there as they awoke from comas, or taught her the Force, or beeped out the damage she’d done to her body during the training sessions she’d continued on past twilight the previous night. 

It was so inviting, the darkness before her eyes, which welcomed her aching head like the most loving of embraces—her mind caked in fog, fingers losing grip on the wires, breath slowing until slumber made her lips part. Not only was she enticed by the darkness behind her eyelids, but by the Dark. Luke spoke constantly of controlling her emotions, reining them in, forbidding herself from succumbing to the desires that she so ardently delighted in pursuing. She wanted nothing more than to return to Jakku and steal every last portion from Unkar Plutt’s station, distribute them in rightfully to every last salvager. She wanted to scream at the Teeto’s that the storms weren’t caused by the warped fairy tales they called gods. Luke had told her that Ben Solo embraced the Dark because it was too tempting with Snoke whispering in his ear to succumb to his desires, to embrace the arousal these desires incited in him. On the Finalizer, she’d glimpsed into Kylo Ren’s mind and saw his obsession to win Darth Vader’s approval, to uphold his legacy. In retrospect, Rey wished she’d entered that chamber with what she knew now: There had never been a Kylo Ren, but a Ben Solo as much tempted by the Dark and torn by the tremulous nature of the Force as Rey. The mists in her mind had not yet parted, yet sunbeams broke through them. Curling her fingers around the wires, Rey concentrated on the battle and the Force. 

“I got ‘em, I got ‘em… Just _watch_ me.” 

She inhaled, locked on the battle. 

“Yeah! Did you see that!” 

“Bullseye! Right where it hurts. ‘Course I saw that.” 

“I _told_ you. Did we get that on a holovid? Wanna watch me destroy them again?” 

“Easy there, now.” 

Unable to find reason to stay awake, Rey loosened her grip on the wires and let her mind drift away. 

* * *

Her head felt marginally less muddled when she awoke. Propped up against pillows, Rey sat on the nook beside the entry to the cockpit, legs stretched out along the seats, a thin blanket tucked over her. BB-8 sat in the pilot’s chair, beeping to Poe as the man commanded the Falcon solitarily.

“Good,” grumbled Finn, dragging a chair to the nook and collapsing onto it. He snapped open a med kit, casting a hard look her direction before he rifled through the med kit, fishing out gloves and slapping the wrist bands as he put them on. “Sleep well?” 

Rey furrowed her brows. “What’s that supposed to mean?” 

“‘What’s that supposed to’—” Finn shook his head, snickering. Then he cut off his laughter and peered at her with a stony expression. “Seriously? Lean over. I need to disinfect your head.” 

She only flicked a look down at the disinfectant and cloth in his hands, then grimaced. 

Finn patted her shoulder. “Come on, Rey, hmm?” Pouring liquid onto the cloth, Finn quirked his lip, eyes softening with a deceptive altruism Rey refused to fall for. “Be a friend and let me kill off any bacteria trying to take away the last of the Jedi?” 

They stared at each other, neither acknowledging the cloth he slowly brought to her head, the slight pressure on her shoulder to make her lean forward. Rey stiffened, resenting that she’d driven herself to exhaustion, making herself dependent on another, and whipped out her hand, knocking into Finn’s forearm and halting his movement. She’d moved too fast, however, eliciting a dizzy spell, and she swayed. Finn raised his eyebrows. It was the ridiculous noise of disinfectant swishing in the bottle as Finn rattled it that made Rey toss up her hands and lean over. 

“That’s a good sport,” said Finn, dabbing the back of her head. 

Rey hissed, the medicine stinging her wound. “Done yet?” 

“Aren’t the Jedi vowed to uphold patience?” 

“I wouldn’t know. I’m not a Jedi yet—ow!” Rey recoiled, snatching the cloth from Finn and pressing it lighter against her head. “What was that?” 

Finn set a cap back onto a phial he hadn’t been holding seconds ago. He shrugged. “I think you mean to _thank_ your doctor.” 

Finn dug through the med kit with great ease, retrieving bandages, gauze, and scissors. Beckoning for the cloth, Finn set the cloth in a bucket Rey hadn’t noticed until the cloth fell to the bottom. Then Finn got a new cloth, pouring a liquid over it, and cleaned the wound a final time before smearing an ointment over it. 

Rey frowned. “You’re awfully good at this.” 

Finn shrugged. “I volunteer at med bay.” 

“I thought you were part of the infantry? What about the missions?” 

“That too.” Finn set a bandage over her wound, then began wrapping gauze over the bandage and around her head. 

Rey curled her fingers into the blanket. “I’m glad you’ve found a place in the galaxy.” 

“Didn’t have much of a choice. I figured I owed it to the Resistance for fixing my back and not banishing me to at least wait before leaving. But then Poe got kidnapped... It just didn’t seem right to leave when Poe would be constantly getting himself killed without a chaperone.” Finn cut off medical tape and set it over her bandage. “You’re awfully good at getting yourself killed, too.” 

It seemed fitting, Rey concluded, that Finn’s place in the galaxy was wherever he could save the most lives. A true Resistance fighter. 

“Waking up after…” said Rey. “It must’ve been terrifying.” 

Finn was quiet, placing items back into the med kit and examining her head before patting her shoulder, pressing her gently back to rest against the wall. “Rey, earlier back at the outpost,” said Finn, frowning. “I don’t resent you for leaving. Of course, I wasn’t _glad_ that you were gone, but—look at yourself.” He whisked a hand over her. “You found _your_ place in the galaxy.” 

A knot pressed into her throat. “I wish everything had turned out differently. I abandoned you. Now it’ll never be the same again.” 

“I disagree. You didn’t abandon me. And, believe me, change is a good thing.” 

Rey didn’t agree, either. Shame overcame her, regardless of Finn’s view, as she had abandoned him, never to return, as her family had done to her, and nothing could prevent their future of meeting each other only on life threatening missions, lest they survived this war and came out unscathed, willing to inhabit the same planet and exchange war stories over Coruscantian brandy. Yet she wanted to be a good friend, which she supposed entailed accepting Finn’s words as truth, even if her heart screamed out in dissent. 

“We won’t be back at base until another couple hours. You need rest.” Finn snapped the med kit shut. “Try to get some sleep.” 

Rey smothered a grin. “If you say so.” 

Finn picked up his chair as he left, settling it off to the side, and went over to the cockpit. Rey shut her eyes, listening to him bicker with BB-8 and the droid fire back irritated beeps before rolling off the pilot’s seat. As she fell victim to slumber, she delighted in the knowledge that whenever she drew upon these memories of Finn, it would not be in vain.


End file.
